Student-produced documentaries to be screened on campus during Scripps Day

Sep 22, 2010Erin Roberts

On Monday, Sept. 27, visiting Scripps professionals and faculty and students from across the Scripps College and the Ohio University campus will be able to see what Scripps students can produce when they work toward a common goal.

Short documentaries produced by Scripps students who traveled to Leipzig, Germany as part of this past summer’s Ohio-Leipzig European Center study abroad trip will be screened from 3:10 to 5 p.m. in Bentley 233.

The screening is the capstone event of the fifth annual Scripps Day, when Scripps faculty and staff welcome visiting professionals from the E.W. Scripps Company and the Scripps Howard Foundation into classrooms to share expertise. Professionals also offer mock interviews and resume critiques for Scripps students. While most Scripps Day events are closed, the screening is open to the entire campus and the community.

“Scripps Day is an established special event in the college that exemplifies the meaning of the historic $15 million gift given by the Scripps Howard Foundation in 2006,” said Scripps Dean Gregory J. Shepherd. “The board members’ desire to see the gift go to programming and initiatives in Scripps—as opposed to bricks and mortar—shows their attention to the changing face of communication education as well as their dedication to our students. We’re honored to continue the tradition.”

Twelve Scripps professionals will travel to the Athens campus for this year’s Scripps Day. Five will be on hand to critique the student-produced documentaries.

The documentaries to be screened—“3 Generations” and “Post Industrial”—were among five produced by 16 Ohio University Scripps College of Communication students from the schools of Media Arts and Studies and Visual Communication and the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism during the OLEC trip.

Students were asked to immerse themselves in the German culture and researched topics prior to the trip. “3 Generations” takes a look at how Germans in three generations view their identity as Germans differently. “Post Industrial” examines the transformation in the town of Markleeburg, where coal mines have given way to recreational land, lakes and resorts.

School of Media Arts and Studies Associate Professor Frederick Lewis, who led the trip, is looking forward to hearing feedback from Scripps professionals on the program and the student-produced documentaries.

“Hopefully, the professionals are going to reinforce what we, as educators, assert: that international education is important in gaining global perspective as early as possible,” he said. “This program took mainly freshmen and sophomores and they proved to be up to the task. I’m really proud of them; they came through great.”

School of Visual Communication Professor Sam Girton and Brandon Flayler, a recent Master’s program graduate from the School of Media Arts and Studies, were also advisers for the OLEC trip.